Skip to main content
Sauce

Boubgeoise Sauce

A sauce made with shallots, parsley, broth or water, vinegar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boubgeoise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In an enamelled saucepan, combine minced shallots, parsley, broth or water, vinegar, pepper, and salt.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook until the shallots are tender.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Shallots
Provide the main aromatic flavour and a mild sweetness that develops as they soften.
Broth or water
Provides the liquid that softens the shallots and forms the body of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the shallots until tender. Shallots that are not cooked through stay raw and sharp. Softening them fully mellows their bite and lets their sweetness come through in the sauce.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Shallotthe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, vinegar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes